Reminders
by The Codebreaker
Summary: The light schematic pulsed gently during the first beta shift after he had gone- a single light. His favorite color. It lay unnoticed. The green light. A short, half-second burst, every five seconds, reminding, waiting. Waiting for a touch that would never again be there.


The light schematic pulsed gently during the first beta shift after he had gone- a single light. His favorite color. It lay unnoticed.

The green light. A short, half-second burst, every five seconds, reminding, waiting. Waiting for a touch that would never again be there. Waiting, for the long, gentle fingers that he admired, flying across the unscratched titanium crystal surface with ease. The man who had been there had never even watched, effortlessly taking orders and carrying them out without a second glance at his fingers. He admired this. One of the tiny things he couldn't help but remember, and then cry about. Another resurfaced. It was the man's fingernails. They were always short. Almost too short. But there was always a speck of dirt under his left ring finger nail. His ring finger. It was always there, and the man ignored it. It reminded him of the time he'd noticed it the first time.

_

The man next to him was tapping his fingers on the panel, waiting too long for beta shift to get their asses to the bridge the night after shore leave on a particularly…rambunctious planet. (All of them had hangovers- nasty hangovers.) Pavel noticed something. It was under the man's fingernail.  
"What ees zat?"  
"What?"  
"Zat…brown thing."  
The man sitting opposite him had laughed and the smile stayed on his face. "That's dirt, Pav."  
It was…far…into their friendship- far enough so that when the other called him by his childhood nicknames, it was more affectionate than teasing. Affectionate enough for Pavel to get butterflies in his stomach and a little grin on his face every time.  
"Where does one find dirt aboard this wessel?"  
His friend's grin grew at the last word.  
"The gardens, Pav."  
"Gardeens?" Pavel had not been thoroughly acquainted with this ship's so-called 'gardens'.  
"They're on Deck E. Want to look when beta shift gets up?"  
Pavel nodded hesitantly. Was this…an invitation?  
After five minutes and a long-overdue shift change, Pavel and Sulu took the lift to Deck E. It being 1050 hours and Pavel being tired, he was yawning hugely on the way down. At one point, he had almost fallen asleep against Sulu. The older man supported him with an arm.  
"Pasha… if you're too tired-"  
"I am not!" he protested, albeit leaning against the wall and yawning.  
Sulu sighed. Pavel was so stubborn…  
The doors whooshed open at Deck E, and Sulu half-dragged Pavel down the hall to his favorite garden. It was the best one, in his opinion, because it was the 'dangerous species' room. There were lots of things with teeth and fangs and razor-sharp vines. Sulu almost changed his mind.  
"Oh, look, dees one's got fangs!" chirped Pavel, seeming to awaken at the dangerous plants. After twenty minutes of dragging Pavel away from things that could kill him, and a tour of the other, less-destructive gardens, Sulu made his way back to the turbo lift.  
"Botany was eenwneted een Russia, you know."  
"Yes, I'm sure. Very sure."  
And with enormous yawns from both of them, they unwittingly started a new tradition.

_

It had buzzed the first time, along with the light. A tiny buzz, but just enough of a vibration that it made Pavel jerk his fingers off the surface. He tried to accept it, to ignore it, but it made his fingers skitter every time. Not enough to move too much, but it always disrupted what he was doing. After the fifteenth time, it made a tiny sound. Almost nothing, but it was the formerly comforting beep that told Pavel that Sulu was working beside him, fingers moving and eyes fixed upon the viewscreen.  
He only could stand it twice, small, hot tears dripping down his face. He sobbed slightly at the third chirp, quickly regaining himself and reining himself to only the tears. But Uhura had noticed. She walked over, slowly, almost as oblivious as Pavel to the action around her. She had been listening as well. She came over and dragged her darker-than-Sulu's fingers across the forbidden, forgotten work surface, muting the sound that was driving Pavel to his knees. He composed himself, but watched the motion, shaking his head, trying to keep the tears in.  
"I'm sorry." A whisper of the same words that she had spoken to Spock, she remembered, after the loss of his mother. They…seemed to fit. They seemed to fit this boy, torturing himself after his best friend had gone.  
Pavel stood up. In the midst of the action around him, no one but Uhura noticed. She called a replacement for him and helped him to the turbolift. His broken expression, right before the doors closed, brought a tear to her own eye.

The light schematic pulsed gently during the first beta shift after he had gone. A single light. His favorite color. It lay unnoticed.

Pavel knew he wouldn't come back. It was the one thing- one of many things he knew that kept him from the bridge. From his duty. He…he had never taken knowledge like this before. He had never known something so tragic, so terrible- except once, when he had caused others pain. Spock's mother. And so, he knew that he deserved it. He deserved the pain this brought him. But Sulu had never done anything to deserve to feel his pain. Never.  
It was only the gentle hisss of the doors to his quarters opening that pulled Pavel from his mind.

It was to be the first night that Hikaru stayed in Pavel's quarters overnight. Neither of them knew that yet.  
It started innocently enough. It was a hailing from Remus, Romulus's sister planet. Kirk was excited, but Spock was cautious.  
"Captain-"  
"Relax. It's nothing." But, predictably, it was something, and the USS Einstein, a large shuttle, was found invading Remus's airspace, seemingly with no mothership.  
"Uhura, hail that ship and connect to Remus. Chekov, start a shipwide yellow alert broadcast." The captain's voice was terse.  
"USS Einstein, this is the USS Enterprise, do you copy? USS Einstein-" said Uhura quickly into her earpiece, already beginning the orders. Chekov started as well. "Attention, zees is a yellow alert circumstanze, yellow alert, warning, zees is a yellow alert, to your stations-" His fingers flew over the crystal surface, tapping commands, as Sulu did the same.  
It had been a long day, of giving and receiving orders, of tapping out commands on the touchtops, of anxiety and stress. When the USS Einstein had been successfully hailed and pulled aboard, the entire crew could relax. Their chatter buzzed with excitement; as this had been an unusual circumstance indeed, really the first big thing to happen in at least two months of empty space and visiting colonized planets, especially New Vulcan. So, naturally, Pavel was more than happy, bubbly even, to have been a large part of the rescue, as he himself had navigated to the shuttle and helped reel it in. He was talking at three times his normal rate, and in Russian.  
"Pavel."  
"Я не могу верить что мы сделало то! -" His face was animated and happy.  
"Pavel."  
"Я изумлен!... Да?"  
"You're speaking Russian."  
Pavel giggled, flushed with embarrassment and pride. It was the cutest damn thing Hikaru had ever seen.  
"Sorry!" His English was still heavily accented.  
"It's funny when you don't realize it."  
That night, they skipped their trip to the gardens, and instead went to Pavel's quarters for a celebration of sorts-seeing as it was Hikaru's birthday also- but not before raiding the mess hall's alcohol cabinet, as alcohol could not be replicated.  
"Beer, beer, wine, tequila, scotch, scotch, whiskey, beer…ah! Wodka!"  
At one point during the night, both of them had gotten extremely drunk and fallen asleep on top of each other. The funniest part, though, was when they were so late for alpha shift that Kirk sent Communications Officer Uhura to fetch them. She knocked first, pulling them both from alcohol-induced sleep and into hangovers.  
"Goddammit…" muttered Sulu, whose hangover was of the 'let me lay in a dark room the entire day, there's something with a red-hot axe chopping its way out of my skull' type.  
"What?" asked Chekov, who, even though he had consumed the same amount of alcohol, only had a slight hangover. "Oh, не хорошо."  
He untangled himself from the rather…compromising position he and Hikaru had been in and opened the door, while muttering "Oh, не хорошо, не хорошо…"  
"Chekov?" Said navigator turned red.  
"Дa…"  
"You were supposed to be on the bridge at 500 ho-Is that Sulu‽"  
"Er…yes…"  
Uhura, unexpectedly, burst out laughing.  
Chekov got it. He turned a shade of red that looked absolutely impossible.  
"Eet's not what you zink!"  
"Of course not…" guffawed Uhura.  
"Aaaagh! I am only sewenteen!"  
Uhura had tears in her eyes. "Priceless," she managed to say between laughs.  
Needless to say, someone called the Captain. And it all fell down from there.


End file.
